I tracked 419 games since the end of January this year. (I'm at university and have a bunch of free time) These are my results: Fast Mana Turn 1&2 overall win: 42.9% (54/119) Fast Mana Turn 1&2 3-player win: 51.9% (27/52) Fast Mana Turn 1&2 4-player win: 39% (23/59) Starting Player wins 3-player: 44.5% (77/173) Starting Player wins 4-player: 27.1% (51/188) My winrate in 3-player: 40% (70/173) My winrate in 4-player: 35% (66/188) Top 3 most played Colors (my opponents only) 1. Simic (93) 28% Win, Average Fun: 2.2; Suspense: 1.8; Interaction: 2.1 (Scale of 0-3) with Simic in the pod 2. Golgari (74) 30% Win, Average Fun: 2.1; Suspense: 1.9; Interaction: 1.8 (Scale of 0-3) with Golgari in the pod 3. Dimir (68) 10% Win, Average Fun: 1.7; Suspense: 1.3; Interaction: 2.1 (Scale of 0-3) with Dimir in the pod
if you like to see the entire document, I've tracked: Name, ID, Commander, number of players, wins, starting player, first KO, End, fast mana + win, fun, suspense, interaction, powerlevel the google docs is in german but should be readable spreadsheets/d/1xIp7phPt9MJ045QKGuxpOs0C8AX18KZ4C7bZqqc69sg/edit?gid=0#gid=0
The girth of combat damage finished makes sense. Most players view that EDH should be nothing but midrange battles of attrition and look down on combo finishes. I think it would be interesting to split combat damage into two categories: normal combat damage and Overrun -effect combat damage. For the sake of fogs it would be worth knowing if the combat kills is a result of burst damage from an overrun or steady damage built over multiple turns.
Yeah, I think theres a lot of combos that still use the combat step. Making Hundreds of Scutes and attacking on the same turn, or 2/3 cards where an attack is suddenly
I don’t mind combos if the whole deck isn’t meant to just always do that one thing. Or if the combo isn’t happening within the first five or six turns meaning I wasted shuffling only to shuffle up again. Love when a grindy game ends with a cool infinite combo
@@qwerqwer-rt8wmThey didn't say they feel they wasted their time when a person wins. Can you not tell the difference between a person winning in general versus a person winning through a specific method which is seen as less interesting, less interactive, or less fun to play against?
This episode last year inspired me to track my own games. For some context I only play with a small group of friends so our meta is pretty well-defined, and we have a house ban list with no fast mana allowed. So far in 57 games this year my win percentage is 29.8%, right about that 1 in 4 number, so I'm pretty happy about that. As far as how games ended my numbers were almost identical to yours. 56.1% for combat 28.1% for Burn/Drain 12.3% for Commander Damage 3.5% for Combo We didn't have any mill, infect, or alt wincons though. This makes me want to try to change that! I already have an Elminster deck with a couple alt wincons thrown in for fun, but I've never pulled them off and usually just end up winning with a bunch of tokens. Now I kinda want to change it a bit to really focus on the alt wincons and maybe mill too!
For those that also watch EDH Deck Building. Does Dana's increased win % as he depowers his decks track with Demo's number one rule; "don't make yourself a target"? If Dana plays Umezawa's Jitte, then 3 people are coming for him because he's played a known powerful card, they know it is a good card, but if, instead, he plays a less powerful card with a similar effect, they're not thinking he's a problem, even though his synergy gives him the effect from Umezawa's Jitte that he wants without playing the known 'powerful' card. Those players are then like the dog sitting in the burning room, "this is fine".
Yeah, I was going to say that less strong individual cards but a stronger, less blatant synergy can easily catch a lot of players off guard, especially when someone else IS popping out the power plays.
Decks with few bombs and excellent synergy are consistently the most politically powerful decks. They stay that way all the way from entry-level to high-power and only fall shrot in CEDH where the lack of the best cards is a shortfall and players are much better at identifying when the Rhystic Study is less of a problem than the player getting very efficient plays.
He also said that he pulls out the generically powerful stuff like rhystic study. Maybe he's swapping them out for cards that work a lot better for the deck rather than being generically powerful
I remember that last year there were people in the comments criticizing Dana for his high win %. I mean, if he is good he is good. And you normally don't choose who do you play with while talking about skill level. I usually win or I'm close to winning more games than the ones that I don't have almost any possibility, playing with newbies or experienced players alike. PD: weird decks win more games with people that don't know you because they don't know how to play against them properly the first 2/3 games. So if you play his Callaphe deck 10 times and win 9 games, but with 4 different playgroups, that increases your win % too.
Agreed! I changed my play style this year to a more niche strategy, but I think I win twice as many games now at my LGS. Every turn I think about who is the threat at the table, and think about who my opponents think the threat of the table is. I try to never be the threat until a 1v1 or I can win that turn. Playing the same decks but I’m sitting around 40% WR at an LGs level. Playing with randoms every week Inflates this percentage quite a bit. When I play with my wife, she is basically just sounding alarms about me to the entire pod all game lol.
I agree. In my playgroup I win roughly 35-40% since my decks are known. But times when I play outside of the normal group, I've had nightd where I've gone 6 for 6 with different decks. Knowing your meta is huge.
@@pullthetrigger9356 I think they hit the hammer on the nail when they talked about the average player and removal. Once someone top decks a piece of removal, they start scanning the board for something to use it on! This supports my strategy extremely well of playing around NOT being the threat until I’m ready to win. To be fair I had the same problem when I started playing commander 😂
One thing to note about Joey calling out that he might be biasing the game endings towards burn/life loss is that might also bias games towards ending with combat damage too. Burning down a table tends to make it easier to finish people off with combats. So I would agree that I’d love to have a lot more samples, but the data is still interesting
I do feel like having a higher win rate does show you something about your pod especially if they are a consistent one. I definitely run into that with my pod so when my win rates go up, I spend time helping them tweak their decks. We definitely aren’t having an arms race to cEDH but the idea will be to help them find the things that just aren’t helping their decks do the thing or if their decks are just trying to do too many things and are unfocused.
Yeah player skill is massive. My lgs has a lot of not very good players with decent decks but I’m sitting at a 50% win rate despite intentionally playing at a lower power level (like a precon versus ob nix kingpin) threat assessment and when to deploy cards will heavily skew the “expected” win rate
I have been doing this year in a journal and made a shorthand for it. Im at 204 games tracked this year and also missed a month or two where i just lost the habit. I track commander name, turns in tick marks, a number for which tuen the game ended, underline the deck going first, a small F for fast mana in the first two turns, small W for who won and note for how I died. It meams that during the game, I only need to make a tick mark to increment the turn and otherwise just play the game normally. The hard part will be data entry into a sheet, but the actual recording feels like second nature when Im in practice. Making up the shorthand notation for myself really helped me invest in the process
I was like Dana and had a higher win rate than I was comfortable with. A few years ago I totally took out tutors. This year I took out some of my interaction and replaced it with stuff that is more synergistic with what my deck was doing specifically and working on my threat assessment and saving whatever removal I have for things that are effecting all the players.
I started tracking games around this time last year so i also have a full year of data for 2024. I am nowhere near as in depth only logging the game and winner w/short commentary on the game. I tried to keep track of fast mana and first players. But i played so much it became an inconvenience trying to remember. I could get nearly a dozen more games but so far i have played 557 games having won 174 of them for a 31.42% win rate. My most played decks were The Sixth Doctor//Yasmin Khan Superfriends(60) and The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride(62) with the next highest decks played only in the 20's. 6th & Friends saw a 35% win rate and Gitrog was at 38.71%. I do have a number of decks with 50% win rate, but most those decks had less than adozen games played and i'm sure would balance out with more. One of my favorite decks(despite the times played) however, Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier saw 50% win rate with 24 games played. But it is one of my older decks and i definitely had a huge amount of cult of the new when it came to my two most played decks.
One LGS near me started giving out store credit for game wins as well as knock outs. Since I've started playing there, I've included "combos" to finish off a player at a low life total. I'd challenge the crew to either track or casually note if knock outs and game wins tend to be via the same or different method.
I’ve been working on Gorm and Virtus for about 2 years. I had a few breakthroughs this year and the deck is popping off now. It’s been one of the hardest lists to tune.
Sometimes I think there is also something to be said about being a good winner/good loser. More important than how often you win/lose is how other people perceive you while winning or losing. When Dana is winning with Callaphe, I dont think most people are annoyed at that 😂
(Dana here) Yep, that's a factor as well. I generally don't get too salty in games, and am affable and upbeat, etc. and I think that also gets me attacked less than the guy who is being kind of self-serious jerk.
bro... winning over 40% and in fact almost 45% of games is kind of unreal in commander. those decks must be really damn strong compared to the table or something.
On top of that he’s depowered his decks and still got better. I get it tho there are just some guys I played against that could be the threat even with a precon really good pilots they just see the game deeper than the rest of the table
I so love these episodes and love comparing them to my own data. I find it fascinating and can really help me to interpret my stats in helpful ways. But man, Dana. Tell us you're pub stomping without telling us you're pub stomping. 😂
Y'all have inspired me to keep track of games! The main things I keep track of are who went first, turn order, what commanders everyone played, and the turn the game ended. I've found some very interesting data out of it which is has been very cool, mainly that games are a lot shorter than we think, which of course we knew, but also that some of my decks *can* definitely drag the games out to longer turn counts if hey are built to do so. Also thanks for suggesting fogs, I put some in a few decks and they've already won me games!
Super excited for this episode. I was inspired by you guys to track all my data this year and I found it really motivating.. it made me want to play more!
Really appreciate getting right to the facts. I would never have the patience to track these stats over 4-5 games much less +100+… Great quality, keep up the superb work!
Here are the stats from my playgroup, we played 276 games with 4 players. Player 1 won 93 games (33.7%) Player 2 won 65 games (23.6%) Player 3 won 64 games (23.2%) Player 4 won 54 games (19.6%)
Wow this has been my favorite episode i've ever watched, super interesting to see statistics from your year in mtg. One thing I would add is I wouldn't place as much stock into win percentage of a deck as Joey has. If the people of the pod had a good time it really doesn't matter how often that deck wins and I think making changes based solely on the percentage will only lead to more frustrating moments when piloting it where you could have won, as Dana alluded to towards the end.
I really appreciate this information and these thoughts. I usually work on my LGS's Commander nights, so I probably get to play less than 20 games a year. Consequently, I want all ov them to be fun and meaningful. Thanks, guys!
22:50 I think this may be partially the result of good player etiquette. It's generally not polite, considerate, or kind to knock a single player out early, because then they likely will spend a solid 30-60 minutes waiting for the game to wrap up to start the next one. The fact that this is the trend is a good sign. While wins that are based on the boardstate are most commonplace, that doesn't mean that the occasional Indomitable Might can't put a player in that position, and it's good that it's not a common problem.
I love winning by Combat (especially by Commander Damage). My Narset Prowess deck is my absolute favorite, and most powerful deck and it wins most of its games with Commander Damage without a single Extra Combat or Extra Turn spell in the deck (because that would be too easy).
I don't know what the point of tracking your win rate is if your conclusion is just "I'm so good 50% is fine". Decks are the thing you can tune down (no one likes intentionally misplaying) so I'd argue these should be depowered even if skill is the culprit. A big part of edh is matching powerlevels which I think is something that could really be worked on here - especially if you are consistently winning so much. Especially against a non-regular group I think that 60% win rate deck should be being played a lot less. I'd also like to see 20+ all precon games to see how your win rate holds up (but that's a point of interest)
to make it easier to input data, consider trying a google form for the questions you care most about and it will handle the formatting in sheets for you
Because of last year's episode I kept my playgroups game data. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking to do it again next year. It was fun to gather all the data and working it out for everyone to enjoy.
You have inspired me to track my own game data for the next year. I am actually creating my spreadsheet and practicing tracking the data I want with my close knit play group right now so I won’t bother other ply groups in the wild.
I've kept brief notes about the games I played this year. For next year, I'm planning on adding 2 ratings. One to indicate what types of decks the game was against (precon, home-brewed/upgraded precon, optimized, competitive) and the other about how my deck performed (great, good, needs tuning, ugh). Thanks for the inspiration.
Since it seems like this is heading towards you guys making a spreadsheet to use in order to track these games, the logical next step would be to produce an app which could not only act as a database for each user's stats, but also gather more data for EDHrec.
I relate to Dana’s issue of a higher winrate than comfortable with - 44.65% from checking past night. Unfortunately I’m in an odd spot for trying to lower it: * I’ve slowed decks down by opting for higher mv cards. * Combos have been wholly replaced by a focus on combat damage. * Tutors wholly replaced by running more threats or card draw, rather than the best threat. * No fast mana besides Sol Ring. * To avoid a synergistic snowball and overrunning a table, I focus on cards with compact threats/value with an inherent limit rather than focusing on synergy between cards. * Staples such as Rhystic Study are omitted in favor of clunkier options. For example in a Dimir deck I’ll run Sire of Stagnation instead as a higher cost draw engine and beater, or Kothophed, Soul Hoarder. * Deck construction is no longer focused on how soon to win, but rather be able to keep on going in a back-and-forth to give opponents windows to Do The Thing. My friends are still having fun so I don’t think they know my winrate issue. Do I start running a few hug effects to boost opponents further?
Yall’s 2023 video convinced me to try and start recording my games, and ive been having a blast. Its just been what deck i played, did i win, and was it a 4 man game (cause i often find myself in 3 person and 5 person pods with strangers). However, ive also been tracking subjective blurbs/ recaps of fun moments in the game, and i love rereading some of those blurbs. I still laugh when i read over the game that I was a huge threat, and in responce to the weirdest stack interaction of player a forcing player b to take an extra turn on top of a mass one sided boardwipe, player c correctly identifies that im still going to win and forces me to mill 86 cards, and everyone just lost their mind cause wtf was happening anymore?
i gotta say this video really inspired me to track down my data for the next year. So i came up with a Google form to do it, sounds more practical than carrying a notebook.
6:43 honestly kinda surprised that Joey’s holiday plans *don’t* involve him playing a whole bunch of commander, considering how much he’s said about his family ‘s decks & games before 😂😂
For the How Games End section, it would have been interesting to see what the numbers look like if we split up "fair" combat and more explosive combat. Craterhoof wins for example are combat wins, but in practice they're combo wins where the combo is creatures + hoof.
Quick stats of mine: 91 games played (I know I played more than this, but sadly did not track every game) Player 1 won 44.44% I won 40% (I started going to a new game store in September and I misjudged the power level there, I have since changed which decks I bring) Average first player out: 8.48 turns Average game length: 9.46 turns Shortest game: turn 5 three different times (Kess Dissident Mage with Exsanguinate, Shalai & Hallar infinite combo with Red Terror, a "quick game" where everyone played their fastest deck which included an Ojer Axonil and an Imodane the Pyrohammer) Longest game: turn 15 (several board wipes, lots of counter spells, the first player got knocked out turn 13 so at least we were all in it the whole time)
I appreciate the reflection on the downsides of having low and high win percentages across a year. I think winning too much above 30%, it becomes no longer a metric of consistency, but maybe unveils an imbalance when for example going through Rule 0. No hate to the podcasters tho! Love crunching the numbers, as well the reflecting you are doing.
I tracked my stats because of you guys in 2024! I was curious how I was stacking up to the LGS league I was playing at and it felt good knowing I did well. I won 61/141 for a 43% win. My most winning decks were Arabella, Azami, daretti!
Just did checked my win percentage this year myself and I am sitting at a record of 34W - 45L for 44%. Right up there with Dana. Notably I play online on PlayEDH where the mods "check" your deck to give it a rating for one of their power levels and ask you to make changes if your deck is a bit in the middle somewhere (like a relatively slow value pile that randomly has a 2 card combo might not be good enough to hang in the lobbies where people are comboing but having this random 2 card combo is not suitable for the low powered tables either, so they will probably ask you to cut the combo to play in the lower power tables) My best win% deck is 6W - 2L, which is a $50 budget upgrade to the Pirates Pre-con. Small sample size and the folks I usually play it against are usually running pre-cons (sometimes with slight upgrades) themselves. Notably those folks I play that deck with are not very competitive and often make misplays, so my win% is likely due to my deckbuilding skills boosting my deck above where their pre-con upgrades are and generally playing tighter. Next is Lara Croft and Tameshi which were both in the high 40% range. I feel like my wins with these were due to the fact they both played hard to interact with permanents (Lara mostly artifacts, and Tameshi is a lands deck). Tameshi especially is a lands deck with a very generous control package. Something like 7-8 boardwipes (several of which hit all non-lands) and 6 counterspells. Plus generally annoying lands like Glacial Chasm. Most decks are not equipped to fight such a deck and just end up folding after the second of third boardwipe. Almost all of its loses come from combos out of hand when my shields were down. I have several more "fair" creature strategies which are hovering around the 30-35% range. It makes sense to me cause they are easier to interact with and rely more on winning through building a board and attacking. My worst deck is my Roon deck which is sadly 0W - 6L. It's a list that has (mostly) been unchanged since around 2013. It was my first commander deck and is based off an old list I had. I changed some of the lands (notably upping them cause I was a newish player and thought 35 was enough when now I am a 38-40 kinda guy)
It would be really cool to have access to the spreadsheet through archidekt so we can look at the overall experience of everyone and if it gets tied to the specific deck we can also look at this information on average for any given commander
Challenge the stat for chainer nightmare adept, using flayer of the hatebound.... flayer of the hatebound works when creatures enter from the graveyard, which works off of reanimate spells, but it is a nonbow with chainer nightmare adept to cast from graveyard as they enter from the stack.
"What percentage of games with fast mana on 1 are won by the player that played it" is an interesting question to ask from a statistical standpoint. I think that the 40ish % number looks scarier than it actually is since i'd also expect a high win percentage from every other deck if they get a specific card at the right moment. A control deck with the right removal spell at the right moment would also have a relatively high win rate, so the consistency with which a deck can do its thing is equally as important if not more so. I can't think of a good way to track something like this but it'd be awfully telling to figure out the different win rates in decks when they get fast starts and when they don't.
I think it's actually way more likely to matter where you are in the torn order in relation to control players than where you are in terms of b1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Having your turn RIGHT after the hard control player almost always means that your stuff is what gets countered, since they always have full resources on your turn. If there are 2 other players between you, though, it's incredibly likely that they will either have no mana or no interaction available by the time you deploy your threats.
Ya'll inspired me to do the data collection thing as well. My data points ended up being date, location, players deck, and whether the deck was fun to pilot. I really suggest doing the fun point, if you win a lot but the fun is low the deck has issues.
19:34 median would be way more useful where instead of average, especially if coupled with the decimal place representing the player turn order. (8.1 being turn 8 player 1, letting us know that there is an advantage of going first because you are more likely to knock someone out a turn ahead)
@EDHRECast thanks for the video and stats. Dana, for 2025 Dana, you should keep track of your win rate against players you do play against regularly - while nobody was upset to lose to you 40%+ of the time, they might have felt different if they knew your win average rate ahead. You could/should also keep track of an individual decks record, if playing balanced games is something you’re looking for.
I tried to track my games this year and naturally barely got any playtime at all. I only wanted to track players, decks, winner and turn count and found myself struggling to keep track of the later, because that's just nothing you can recall next day. Tbh even when I started a game with the intention to track the turns I'm often not certain if it was done properly after the game. Do you keep like a notepad on the table all game considering you track way more data? Isn't that a bit distracting, always waiting for a gotcha moment you have to write down? I think what I want to know is how exactly does it look like when you take notes during a game. Do you pen it down in a booklet like the thumbnail and then add it to a digital sheet later? Any best practices? Anything you want to track but are struggling to? Did the way you took notes during a game (not just the ammount of data) change over time?
If watching the Commander Clash has taught me anything assuming commander decks with really good pilots have a significant advantage in EDH because they usually don’t present as an issue to the group until it’s too late. I think this might be an explanation for Dana’s high win rate. It’s not the cards it’s just that any well made deck that doesn’t draw heavy interaction has a very good chance of winning games late
Dana has a high win % because he is very good. That's all. Ofc if he stops playing Sol Ring as people are saying, his win % will go down, but not that much IMO. Playing with strangers a lot makes It more reliable too, because you can be playing a noob or an expert.
@ yes but you can be extremely good and if you present a must kill commander it’s difficult to overcome a 3v1. I think it’s a combination of being very good and not presenting as a must kill threat early
When I feel that my win percentage is getting too high, I try to help the other players tweak and improve decks and bluff less, sticking to open honest advice over politicking - better that they improve than me handicap myself
You also use more of your brain to do the activity if you use both hands as the dominant hand at times. I had to play piano as a kid and I still have considerable manual dexterity in my off hand, not quite ambidextrous, but good enough that I can work with both hands effectively. I'm pretty confident that it also made me smarter fwiw. Glad I finally listened to the stats episode!
I think new decks perform better because your deckbuilding skills improve with each deck you build and then play and tune, giving you more and more experience so you can naturally skip further and further ahead on the tuning passes, so even a spontaneous deck can be a strong, functional, interesting game piece that's fun to play and play against
its funny how in cedh if your deck is about 26-30% WR its like top tier strong, and dana and joey playing casual in the 34-44% trying to make their decks less strong is such a wild ride.
I know it's probably easier but I do think it. Could a really fun episode to run through the data as a kind quiz show for Matt make guesses about the data.
I'm really curious about the decks that you're tuning down: do you keep a list of what you've traded out so you can quickly power it back up when in the right game?
Personally tracked 147 games so far this year My win rate was 39% Avg game went 9.6 turns Longest game was 15 turns Shortest was 4 turns First player won 28% of games 17% of games had T1 fast mana. Of those, the player with the fast mana won 41% of the games Infinite combos accounted for 11% of the wins Alt win cons like mill or Karn/Lattice locks accounted for 3% of wins
any one else notice that Dana said he tunes down his decks because they win too much, but mentions he doesnt tune them down too much cause it feels bad giving away a win, and then is surprised that he has a higher win percentage?
Ive been wanting to try to track my games but wasnt sure how much or little to worry about tracking. This gives a good perspective on that. Also, I had no idea you were in the Seattle area Joey! I'm in that area too, id love to jam some games and contribute to your data collection!
I'm only up about on the point on fast mana, but I think the Crypt ban in particular actually sparked a bit of community awareness on the fact that Sol Ring is very much similar a thing to put down on turn one. I noticed this myself in my play group talks and generally with strangers, where more players think about how impactful an opening hand Sol Ring is vs being thought of as the "honest" Mana Crypt. Even if I draw my seven and its sol ring + talisman, I find myself sand bagging the sol ring a little because sure I can start with a huge advantage, but if I dont have something hugely impactful to do in a openly competitive game with familiar people, Id much prefer to just land, land talisman, and put out Sol as soon as it puts me just that one mana ahead, or doesn't jump out too much. I think a lot of players are doing similar, a turn one Sol is not an unreasonable removal target.
30:50 So I'm personally kinda wondering what the definition of Combo is that ya'll used. Is Kiki-Jiki a combo win? Or a combat win? (cause technically the way they died was combat) Because in my groups a Kiki win feels the same to the table as a ThOracle win.
IMO, the Deck Win% numbers seem to be so small that there's a risk of over-interpretation. A binompdf(.25,4,2) says there's a 26% chance of seeing two or more wins. What about stratifying your decks into categories of "frequent" or "infrequent" and looking at win percentages that way? Even so, I think your point might stand. Just looking at Joey's infrequently played decks, there are many above the "expected" win rate of 25%. There is also possible selection bias. Dana might play decks more often if they tend to win a comfortable percentage of games. Joey might play decks less often if they seem to win too much. So it could actually be (perceived) win rate that determines whether a deck is frequently played, not the other way around. Thanks for the motivation to give my rusty AP Stats brain a workout! ❤️
This makes me want to track my own win rates next year. Me and my wife already have a scoreboard for 1v1s, so I really just need to start tracking games outside the house.
Do you guys tend to not play modified precons? It looks like you stick to fully personal builds with the occasional stock precon. Makes a lot of sense when you're literally the EDHrec team, but just an interesting difference from maybe the average commander player. Or would slightly modified precons still fall under the "precons" bucket in Joey's data for example?
Hot take: I think the win condition percentage would be really different at more competitive and/or CEDH tables. It seems like a lot of win conditions (like lock, combo, alt wins, etc.) are sort of verboten at casual tables. Popping off to create a huge board and then swing for combat damage seems like the most accepted way of "having a fun game" while winning at a casual table. Even burn seems to be negatively affected by this gentleman's agreement to not be mean. Group slug / control burn can be really effective at winning, but most people consider it "not fun". I think what play patterns are considered acceptable really affect what the win condition is.
Commie Commander here, Have you thought about creating a feature on EDHREC where we can input our playgroup's data and build a real hive mind? I’d totally be down to track it! My group plays almost every Saturday with 8-12 people, no custom bans, full proxies allowed, and an honor system for unlimited mulligans. Our only mulligan rule: no fast mana (e.g., Sol Ring) on turn 1 if you take 2 or more mulligans. Sometimes we throw in Planechase for fun too so I would make sure to asterisk that. Here’s what I tracked from your episode: Total Games Win Percentage Does Going First Win More? Avg Game Length Fast Mana Frequency & Win Percentage First KO How Games End Most-Played Decks Best/Worst Decks I’d also love to track: (the biggest one) Proxies vs no proxies. (This would pretty much be me and my son but there are others who have 100% proxied decks) I'd be interested in showing off the data to counter point a lot of the communities fuss about them. As well as: Pregame discussions vs. no communication Number of deals or political interactions Salt-score cards that appeared Frequency of interaction (removal, counters, etc.) Surprise blowouts (Teferi's Protection, Inkshield, etc.) Impact of expensive vs. budget mana bases Deck archetypes played I can even upload decks yearly or after changes. Contextualizing all this data is so nerdy but so fun for me. What do you think-can we make this happen? Great episode! ✊ Remember all, seize the means of your own card production, proxy everything regret nothing comrades.
So I’ve found that my winningest deck is exactly like Joey said it’s Omo and I win with maze’s end generally out of seemingly no where. At the start of the turn I’ll have 5-6 gates and get up to ten by flickering Omo and ulvenwald hydra. My sovereign okinec deck presents its threats on board. And while it is pretty explosive. Because people see the creatures doubling and sometimes tripling their power every turn I find it much harder to win with this deck
That is absolutely insane that a single card (sol ring) on turn one wins about 50% of games and is not banned. Especially in a 4 player game. Like I thought it was bad but it’s baaaaaad. And before someone inevitably replies, yes ~50 is not the largest sample size, but is approaching statistical confidence.
I have a theory about why Dana wins much more games than Joey: the "new deck" boost. When playing against players who don't know your deck, you have an advantage because thru don't exactly know what is the threat or important synergy and how to best disrupt it. I've found that when someone in my group builds a new deck, the first couple games are favored for them to win because we don't quite know what to expect. Then the percentage normalizes as the group learns how powerful that deck is, which card is to watch out for etc
There are definitely decks I want to play more (Prosper and Bristly Bill), but their reputation among the community prevents me from playing them as much, even though I genuinely brew mine to be relatively chill. I try really hard to make all of my decks as fun to play against as possible because I personally don't care about winning. I just want to cast some spells and do timmy things. I just started tracking my stats with MythicTracker a couple weeks ago and I'm very curious to see some "objective" performance metrics on my stronger decks. With that said, I'm fully aware that how people feel about a game is not more important than how often a deck wins, so I'm still not going to play those decks if someone doesn't want to play against them. I have plenty of decks, but I will at least be able to say "it's Prosper, but it tends to win on turn 8 around 30% of the time," or whatever. Edit: One stat that's practically impossible to track is how effective you are at politicking. I constantly politic and I love it - one of my regular podmates calls me Wormtongue when we're playing with randos on Spelltable because he knows when I'm peddling my bullshit. I really think people should politic more. To be clear: not lie, just be a bit of a subtle weasel. And sometimes I feel bad for it, like last night when I pseudo-unintentionally baited someone into using their removal spell on a problem card when I could have dealt with it, so I saved them from taking 20 points of damage that would have been lethal that same round. So I believe I'm safely in the "chaotic good" archetype. Politicking can be so fun!
I think you should play them more but in pods where all the decks have a bit of a reputation. I love when people bring out swingy commanders because then I get to really let loose with anhelo hahahaha
I think the assumption that players being knocked out signaling the near-end of the game is a function of the increase in speed/power of commander isn't accurate. It seems more likely that it is a function of the awareness of the player base and of consideration of others. Unless I think someone can remove me/stop me, I tend to not knock someone out unless I feel close to being able to do the same to the table. This feels common among others I play with. We're not trying to remove someone turn 6 and have a game go to 17. Commander gameplay channels are at a high point in viewership and many of the most popular ones include people being considerate on the battlefield. This is likely to carry over into games.
I do feel that combo has to be better defined, a lot of life loss and burn wins in my experience involve a combo for the mana production or to generate near infinite’s triggers for a life loss effect or something of the sorts
This inspires me to keep track of my game data this upcoming year! Have you all shown an example of building a spreadsheet to track all of this information?
Gods I love data breakdowns, great video. This does leave me curious on the effect you 2 have on the decks played. Players may be less likely to play certain win cons or sandbag a card here or there due to the visibility. Anecdotally this year I experienced far more combo wins in my games and the games end far quicker than your 9.x turn games average. However I certainly skew my own data as I invite players to play their meanest most killingest decks and to go for the throat when the kill is available. I think everyone meddles with their own results in this way to some degree, it would be funny to collaborate with the community to get a large enough data pool that we can pave over those personal biases
@@EDHRECast Dana keep up the good work another great video and conversation. Yeah the allusion had me wondering what patterns might arise with a large sample size. I would love it if there were regional patterns formed, like do games end a turn earlier on average in new Jersey? Are there more combo decks in Alabama? Do Canadians play fewer Sol Rings? Which country uses the most red mana? I'd love some way to easily record and share this info so we could use everyone's data to find silly things like that
(Dana here) Probably, but simultaneously running a cmdr like that is significantly less fun for me since it feels like the card got the win vs me earning it.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
I love nerding out to all these numbers and statistics. This was so interesting and I was definitely looking forward to this episode.
Thanks! A lot of work goes into it, and we love nerding out on this data too!
I tracked 419 games since the end of January this year. (I'm at university and have a bunch of free time)
These are my results:
Fast Mana Turn 1&2 overall win: 42.9% (54/119)
Fast Mana Turn 1&2 3-player win: 51.9% (27/52)
Fast Mana Turn 1&2 4-player win: 39% (23/59)
Starting Player wins 3-player: 44.5% (77/173)
Starting Player wins 4-player: 27.1% (51/188)
My winrate in 3-player: 40% (70/173)
My winrate in 4-player: 35% (66/188)
Top 3 most played Colors (my opponents only)
1. Simic (93) 28% Win, Average Fun: 2.2; Suspense: 1.8; Interaction: 2.1 (Scale of 0-3) with Simic in the pod
2. Golgari (74) 30% Win, Average Fun: 2.1; Suspense: 1.9; Interaction: 1.8 (Scale of 0-3) with Golgari in the pod
3. Dimir (68) 10% Win, Average Fun: 1.7; Suspense: 1.3; Interaction: 2.1 (Scale of 0-3) with Dimir in the pod
if you like to see the entire document, I've tracked:
Name, ID, Commander, number of players, wins, starting player, first KO, End, fast mana + win, fun, suspense, interaction, powerlevel
the google docs is in german but should be readable
spreadsheets/d/1xIp7phPt9MJ045QKGuxpOs0C8AX18KZ4C7bZqqc69sg/edit?gid=0#gid=0
@@hoffedemann5370 should also take into account human behaviur as humans dont always make the optimal play and sometimes the opposite
Good stats, thanks.
So Dimir is not as powerful, not as fun, and not as suspenseful, yet still the 3rd most commonly played colour combo. Interesting
How did you measure fun, suspense and interaction? What is being represented by 2.1 out of 3?
Yaaaaas gimme the graphs, the pie charts and percentages! My nerdy ass lives for this shit 😂🎉
The girth of combat damage finished makes sense. Most players view that EDH should be nothing but midrange battles of attrition and look down on combo finishes.
I think it would be interesting to split combat damage into two categories: normal combat damage and Overrun -effect combat damage. For the sake of fogs it would be worth knowing if the combat kills is a result of burst damage from an overrun or steady damage built over multiple turns.
Yeah, I think theres a lot of combos that still use the combat step. Making Hundreds of Scutes and attacking on the same turn, or 2/3 cards where an attack is suddenly
as a fog user, doesn't matter.
wether I'm stopping 30 or 5 its usually enough to get back around for 1 more turn.
I don’t mind combos if the whole deck isn’t meant to just always do that one thing. Or if the combo isn’t happening within the first five or six turns meaning I wasted shuffling only to shuffle up again. Love when a grindy game ends with a cool infinite combo
@taylornewman9561 if someone winning means you "wasted your time" then go do something else.
this attitude is disgusting at the game table.
@@qwerqwer-rt8wmThey didn't say they feel they wasted their time when a person wins. Can you not tell the difference between a person winning in general versus a person winning through a specific method which is seen as less interesting, less interactive, or less fun to play against?
This episode last year inspired me to track my own games. For some context I only play with a small group of friends so our meta is pretty well-defined, and we have a house ban list with no fast mana allowed. So far in 57 games this year my win percentage is 29.8%, right about that 1 in 4 number, so I'm pretty happy about that. As far as how games ended my numbers were almost identical to yours.
56.1% for combat
28.1% for Burn/Drain
12.3% for Commander Damage
3.5% for Combo
We didn't have any mill, infect, or alt wincons though. This makes me want to try to change that! I already have an Elminster deck with a couple alt wincons thrown in for fun, but I've never pulled them off and usually just end up winning with a bunch of tokens. Now I kinda want to change it a bit to really focus on the alt wincons and maybe mill too!
For those that also watch EDH Deck Building. Does Dana's increased win % as he depowers his decks track with Demo's number one rule; "don't make yourself a target"?
If Dana plays Umezawa's Jitte, then 3 people are coming for him because he's played a known powerful card, they know it is a good card, but if, instead, he plays a less powerful card with a similar effect, they're not thinking he's a problem, even though his synergy gives him the effect from Umezawa's Jitte that he wants without playing the known 'powerful' card. Those players are then like the dog sitting in the burning room, "this is fine".
Yeah, I was going to say that less strong individual cards but a stronger, less blatant synergy can easily catch a lot of players off guard, especially when someone else IS popping out the power plays.
(Dana here) It's certainly a factor.
Decks with few bombs and excellent synergy are consistently the most politically powerful decks. They stay that way all the way from entry-level to high-power and only fall shrot in CEDH where the lack of the best cards is a shortfall and players are much better at identifying when the Rhystic Study is less of a problem than the player getting very efficient plays.
He also said that he pulls out the generically powerful stuff like rhystic study. Maybe he's swapping them out for cards that work a lot better for the deck rather than being generically powerful
This is was one of my favorite episodes you did last year and I’m glad you did/will do it again! I’ll try to take this project up next year too!
I remember that last year there were people in the comments criticizing Dana for his high win %. I mean, if he is good he is good. And you normally don't choose who do you play with while talking about skill level. I usually win or I'm close to winning more games than the ones that I don't have almost any possibility, playing with newbies or experienced players alike.
PD: weird decks win more games with people that don't know you because they don't know how to play against them properly the first 2/3 games. So if you play his Callaphe deck 10 times and win 9 games, but with 4 different playgroups, that increases your win % too.
Agreed! I changed my play style this year to a more niche strategy, but I think I win twice as many games now at my LGS. Every turn I think about who is the threat at the table, and think about who my opponents think the threat of the table is. I try to never be the threat until a 1v1 or I can win that turn.
Playing the same decks but I’m sitting around 40% WR at an LGs level. Playing with randoms every week Inflates this percentage quite a bit. When I play with my wife, she is basically just sounding alarms about me to the entire pod all game lol.
Amen brotha
I agree. In my playgroup I win roughly 35-40% since my decks are known. But times when I play outside of the normal group, I've had nightd where I've gone 6 for 6 with different decks. Knowing your meta is huge.
@@pullthetrigger9356 I think they hit the hammer on the nail when they talked about the average player and removal. Once someone top decks a piece of removal, they start scanning the board for something to use it on! This supports my strategy extremely well of playing around NOT being the threat until I’m ready to win.
To be fair I had the same problem when I started playing commander 😂
One thing to note about Joey calling out that he might be biasing the game endings towards burn/life loss is that might also bias games towards ending with combat damage too. Burning down a table tends to make it easier to finish people off with combats. So I would agree that I’d love to have a lot more samples, but the data is still interesting
Yesss! I’ve waited all year for this episode! Best way to cap off 2024.
We're so glad you like it! These are some of our favorites too
You’ve inspired me to track my games for 2025. Can’t wait to see what it shows. Thank you! ^.^
That's so cool! Cheers and good luck!
12:11 the knock on effect of running less exciting stuff meaning that you're drawing less threat which in turn gives you more win chances.
It's a factor for sure.
Lol the whole time that snowman puddle was on the screen, I couldn’t stop staring at it. Good stuff.
I do feel like having a higher win rate does show you something about your pod especially if they are a consistent one. I definitely run into that with my pod so when my win rates go up, I spend time helping them tweak their decks. We definitely aren’t having an arms race to cEDH but the idea will be to help them find the things that just aren’t helping their decks do the thing or if their decks are just trying to do too many things and are unfocused.
Yeah player skill is massive. My lgs has a lot of not very good players with decent decks but I’m sitting at a 50% win rate despite intentionally playing at a lower power level (like a precon versus ob nix kingpin) threat assessment and when to deploy cards will heavily skew the “expected” win rate
I have been doing this year in a journal and made a shorthand for it. Im at 204 games tracked this year and also missed a month or two where i just lost the habit.
I track commander name, turns in tick marks, a number for which tuen the game ended, underline the deck going first, a small F for fast mana in the first two turns, small W for who won and note for how I died. It meams that during the game, I only need to make a tick mark to increment the turn and otherwise just play the game normally.
The hard part will be data entry into a sheet, but the actual recording feels like second nature when Im in practice. Making up the shorthand notation for myself really helped me invest in the process
>sees statistics video.
>Game developer neurons activate.
"I'm gonna need a coffee for this one..."
I was like Dana and had a higher win rate than I was comfortable with. A few years ago I totally took out tutors. This year I took out some of my interaction and replaced it with stuff that is more synergistic with what my deck was doing specifically and working on my threat assessment and saving whatever removal I have for things that are effecting all the players.
I started tracking games around this time last year so i also have a full year of data for 2024. I am nowhere near as in depth only logging the game and winner w/short commentary on the game. I tried to keep track of fast mana and first players. But i played so much it became an inconvenience trying to remember.
I could get nearly a dozen more games but so far i have played 557 games having won 174 of them for a 31.42% win rate.
My most played decks were The Sixth Doctor//Yasmin Khan Superfriends(60) and The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride(62) with the next highest decks played only in the 20's.
6th & Friends saw a 35% win rate and Gitrog was at 38.71%. I do have a number of decks with 50% win rate, but most those decks had less than adozen games played and i'm sure would balance out with more. One of my favorite decks(despite the times played) however, Agrus Kos, Eternal Soldier saw 50% win rate with 24 games played. But it is one of my older decks and i definitely had a huge amount of cult of the new when it came to my two most played decks.
One LGS near me started giving out store credit for game wins as well as knock outs. Since I've started playing there, I've included "combos" to finish off a player at a low life total.
I'd challenge the crew to either track or casually note if knock outs and game wins tend to be via the same or different method.
I’ve been working on Gorm and Virtus for about 2 years. I had a few breakthroughs this year and the deck is popping off now. It’s been one of the hardest lists to tune.
Sometimes I think there is also something to be said about being a good winner/good loser. More important than how often you win/lose is how other people perceive you while winning or losing. When Dana is winning with Callaphe, I dont think most people are annoyed at that 😂
(Dana here) Yep, that's a factor as well. I generally don't get too salty in games, and am affable and upbeat, etc. and I think that also gets me attacked less than the guy who is being kind of self-serious jerk.
I'm finishing up my own personal data log for this year. 160 games total so I'm excited to see what you did!
bro... winning over 40% and in fact almost 45% of games is kind of unreal in commander. those decks must be really damn strong compared to the table or something.
On top of that he’s depowered his decks and still got better. I get it tho there are just some guys I played against that could be the threat even with a precon really good pilots they just see the game deeper than the rest of the table
I so love these episodes and love comparing them to my own data. I find it fascinating and can really help me to interpret my stats in helpful ways.
But man, Dana. Tell us you're pub stomping without telling us you're pub stomping. 😂
What a weird comment.
I was literally re-watching last years episode earlier in the day before this released! I am planning to start tracking my own games next year.
Y'all have inspired me to keep track of games! The main things I keep track of are who went first, turn order, what commanders everyone played, and the turn the game ended. I've found some very interesting data out of it which is has been very cool, mainly that games are a lot shorter than we think, which of course we knew, but also that some of my decks *can* definitely drag the games out to longer turn counts if hey are built to do so. Also thanks for suggesting fogs, I put some in a few decks and they've already won me games!
Missed opportunity for a "4/4 elk with flying and vigilance" joke for Sarah Buck.
Super excited for this episode. I was inspired by you guys to track all my data this year and I found it really motivating.. it made me want to play more!
Really appreciate getting right to the facts. I would never have the patience to track these stats over 4-5 games much less +100+…
Great quality, keep up the superb work!
Here are the stats from my playgroup, we played 276 games with 4 players.
Player 1 won 93 games (33.7%)
Player 2 won 65 games (23.6%)
Player 3 won 64 games (23.2%)
Player 4 won 54 games (19.6%)
Wow this has been my favorite episode i've ever watched, super interesting to see statistics from your year in mtg. One thing I would add is I wouldn't place as much stock into win percentage of a deck as Joey has. If the people of the pod had a good time it really doesn't matter how often that deck wins and I think making changes based solely on the percentage will only lead to more frustrating moments when piloting it where you could have won, as Dana alluded to towards the end.
Excellent video.
I really appreciate this information and these thoughts. I usually work on my LGS's Commander nights, so I probably get to play less than 20 games a year. Consequently, I want all ov them to be fun and meaningful. Thanks, guys!
22:50 I think this may be partially the result of good player etiquette. It's generally not polite, considerate, or kind to knock a single player out early, because then they likely will spend a solid 30-60 minutes waiting for the game to wrap up to start the next one. The fact that this is the trend is a good sign. While wins that are based on the boardstate are most commonplace, that doesn't mean that the occasional Indomitable Might can't put a player in that position, and it's good that it's not a common problem.
I love winning by Combat (especially by Commander Damage). My Narset Prowess deck is my absolute favorite, and most powerful deck and it wins most of its games with Commander Damage without a single Extra Combat or Extra Turn spell in the deck (because that would be too easy).
I don't know what the point of tracking your win rate is if your conclusion is just "I'm so good 50% is fine". Decks are the thing you can tune down (no one likes intentionally misplaying) so I'd argue these should be depowered even if skill is the culprit.
A big part of edh is matching powerlevels which I think is something that could really be worked on here - especially if you are consistently winning so much.
Especially against a non-regular group I think that 60% win rate deck should be being played a lot less.
I'd also like to see 20+ all precon games to see how your win rate holds up (but that's a point of interest)
Sounds like you have a skill issue.
to make it easier to input data, consider trying a google form for the questions you care most about and it will handle the formatting in sheets for you
Because of last year's episode I kept my playgroups game data. It was a lot of fun and I'm looking to do it again next year. It was fun to gather all the data and working it out for everyone to enjoy.
I've started recording my games using Joey's tracking sheet from last year gotta do the analysis
You have inspired me to track my own game data for the next year. I am actually creating my spreadsheet and practicing tracking the data I want with my close knit play group right now so I won’t bother other ply groups in the wild.
I've kept brief notes about the games I played this year. For next year, I'm planning on adding 2 ratings. One to indicate what types of decks the game was against (precon, home-brewed/upgraded precon, optimized, competitive) and the other about how my deck performed (great, good, needs tuning, ugh). Thanks for the inspiration.
Since it seems like this is heading towards you guys making a spreadsheet to use in order to track these games, the logical next step would be to produce an app which could not only act as a database for each user's stats, but also gather more data for EDHrec.
I relate to Dana’s issue of a higher winrate than comfortable with - 44.65% from checking past night. Unfortunately I’m in an odd spot for trying to lower it:
* I’ve slowed decks down by opting for higher mv cards.
* Combos have been wholly replaced by a focus on combat damage.
* Tutors wholly replaced by running more threats or card draw, rather than the best threat.
* No fast mana besides Sol Ring.
* To avoid a synergistic snowball and overrunning a table, I focus on cards with compact threats/value with an inherent limit rather than focusing on synergy between cards.
* Staples such as Rhystic Study are omitted in favor of clunkier options. For example in a Dimir deck I’ll run Sire of Stagnation instead as a higher cost draw engine and beater, or Kothophed, Soul Hoarder.
* Deck construction is no longer focused on how soon to win, but rather be able to keep on going in a back-and-forth to give opponents windows to Do The Thing.
My friends are still having fun so I don’t think they know my winrate issue. Do I start running a few hug effects to boost opponents further?
Yall’s 2023 video convinced me to try and start recording my games, and ive been having a blast. Its just been what deck i played, did i win, and was it a 4 man game (cause i often find myself in 3 person and 5 person pods with strangers). However, ive also been tracking subjective blurbs/ recaps of fun moments in the game, and i love rereading some of those blurbs. I still laugh when i read over the game that I was a huge threat, and in responce to the weirdest stack interaction of player a forcing player b to take an extra turn on top of a mass one sided boardwipe, player c correctly identifies that im still going to win and forces me to mill 86 cards, and everyone just lost their mind cause wtf was happening anymore?
i gotta say this video really inspired me to track down my data for the next year. So i came up with a Google form to do it, sounds more practical than carrying a notebook.
Ooo so excited for this one
6:43 honestly kinda surprised that Joey’s holiday plans *don’t* involve him playing a whole bunch of commander, considering how much he’s said about his family ‘s decks & games before 😂😂
I cant believe it's been a year since the last one, it only feels like it was a few weeks ago . . .
For the How Games End section, it would have been interesting to see what the numbers look like if we split up "fair" combat and more explosive combat. Craterhoof wins for example are combat wins, but in practice they're combo wins where the combo is creatures + hoof.
Quick stats of mine:
91 games played (I know I played more than this, but sadly did not track every game)
Player 1 won 44.44%
I won 40% (I started going to a new game store in September and I misjudged the power level there, I have since changed which decks I bring)
Average first player out: 8.48 turns
Average game length: 9.46 turns
Shortest game: turn 5 three different times (Kess Dissident Mage with Exsanguinate, Shalai & Hallar infinite combo with Red Terror, a "quick game" where everyone played their fastest deck which included an Ojer Axonil and an Imodane the Pyrohammer)
Longest game: turn 15 (several board wipes, lots of counter spells, the first player got knocked out turn 13 so at least we were all in it the whole time)
I appreciate the reflection on the downsides of having low and high win percentages across a year.
I think winning too much above 30%, it becomes no longer a metric of consistency, but maybe unveils an imbalance when for example going through Rule 0.
No hate to the podcasters tho! Love crunching the numbers, as well the reflecting you are doing.
I tracked my stats because of you guys in 2024! I was curious how I was stacking up to the LGS league I was playing at and it felt good knowing I did well. I won 61/141 for a 43% win. My most winning decks were Arabella, Azami, daretti!
I LOVE CHARTS LETS GOOOOO
Just did checked my win percentage this year myself and I am sitting at a record of 34W - 45L for 44%. Right up there with Dana.
Notably I play online on PlayEDH where the mods "check" your deck to give it a rating for one of their power levels and ask you to make changes if your deck is a bit in the middle somewhere (like a relatively slow value pile that randomly has a 2 card combo might not be good enough to hang in the lobbies where people are comboing but having this random 2 card combo is not suitable for the low powered tables either, so they will probably ask you to cut the combo to play in the lower power tables)
My best win% deck is 6W - 2L, which is a $50 budget upgrade to the Pirates Pre-con. Small sample size and the folks I usually play it against are usually running pre-cons (sometimes with slight upgrades) themselves. Notably those folks I play that deck with are not very competitive and often make misplays, so my win% is likely due to my deckbuilding skills boosting my deck above where their pre-con upgrades are and generally playing tighter.
Next is Lara Croft and Tameshi which were both in the high 40% range. I feel like my wins with these were due to the fact they both played hard to interact with permanents (Lara mostly artifacts, and Tameshi is a lands deck). Tameshi especially is a lands deck with a very generous control package. Something like 7-8 boardwipes (several of which hit all non-lands) and 6 counterspells. Plus generally annoying lands like Glacial Chasm. Most decks are not equipped to fight such a deck and just end up folding after the second of third boardwipe. Almost all of its loses come from combos out of hand when my shields were down.
I have several more "fair" creature strategies which are hovering around the 30-35% range. It makes sense to me cause they are easier to interact with and rely more on winning through building a board and attacking.
My worst deck is my Roon deck which is sadly 0W - 6L. It's a list that has (mostly) been unchanged since around 2013. It was my first commander deck and is based off an old list I had. I changed some of the lands (notably upping them cause I was a newish player and thought 35 was enough when now I am a 38-40 kinda guy)
Final conclusions spoke to me
55:08 Bruh I WISH I could get a game of EDH in every day. These days I play 1 a week usually and if it's fast, maybe a second :(
(Dana here) It's way easier to get that many in when it's part of your job. We'd def have less chances to play if we weren't doing this for careers.
It would be really cool to have access to the spreadsheet through archidekt so we can look at the overall experience of everyone and if it gets tied to the specific deck we can also look at this information on average for any given commander
Challenge the stat for chainer nightmare adept, using flayer of the hatebound.... flayer of the hatebound works when creatures enter from the graveyard, which works off of reanimate spells, but it is a nonbow with chainer nightmare adept to cast from graveyard as they enter from the stack.
"What percentage of games with fast mana on 1 are won by the player that played it" is an interesting question to ask from a statistical standpoint. I think that the 40ish % number looks scarier than it actually is since i'd also expect a high win percentage from every other deck if they get a specific card at the right moment. A control deck with the right removal spell at the right moment would also have a relatively high win rate, so the consistency with which a deck can do its thing is equally as important if not more so. I can't think of a good way to track something like this but it'd be awfully telling to figure out the different win rates in decks when they get fast starts and when they don't.
I think it's actually way more likely to matter where you are in the torn order in relation to control players than where you are in terms of b1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. Having your turn RIGHT after the hard control player almost always means that your stuff is what gets countered, since they always have full resources on your turn. If there are 2 other players between you, though, it's incredibly likely that they will either have no mana or no interaction available by the time you deploy your threats.
Ya'll inspired me to do the data collection thing as well. My data points ended up being date, location, players deck, and whether the deck was fun to pilot. I really suggest doing the fun point, if you win a lot but the fun is low the deck has issues.
19:34 median would be way more useful where instead of average, especially if coupled with the decimal place representing the player turn order. (8.1 being turn 8 player 1, letting us know that there is an advantage of going first because you are more likely to knock someone out a turn ahead)
@EDHRECast thanks for the video and stats. Dana, for 2025 Dana, you should keep track of your win rate against players you do play against regularly - while nobody was upset to lose to you 40%+ of the time, they might have felt different if they knew your win average rate ahead. You could/should also keep track of an individual decks record, if playing balanced games is something you’re looking for.
In our playgroup 1st seat won 33% and 4th seat 20%
I tried to track my games this year and naturally barely got any playtime at all.
I only wanted to track players, decks, winner and turn count and found myself struggling to keep track of the later, because that's just nothing you can recall next day. Tbh even when I started a game with the intention to track the turns I'm often not certain if it was done properly after the game.
Do you keep like a notepad on the table all game considering you track way more data? Isn't that a bit distracting, always waiting for a gotcha moment you have to write down?
I think what I want to know is how exactly does it look like when you take notes during a game. Do you pen it down in a booklet like the thumbnail and then add it to a digital sheet later? Any best practices? Anything you want to track but are struggling to? Did the way you took notes during a game (not just the ammount of data) change over time?
If watching the Commander Clash has taught me anything assuming commander decks with really good pilots have a significant advantage in EDH because they usually don’t present as an issue to the group until it’s too late. I think this might be an explanation for Dana’s high win rate. It’s not the cards it’s just that any well made deck that doesn’t draw heavy interaction has a very good chance of winning games late
Dana has a high win % because he is very good. That's all. Ofc if he stops playing Sol Ring as people are saying, his win % will go down, but not that much IMO. Playing with strangers a lot makes It more reliable too, because you can be playing a noob or an expert.
@ yes but you can be extremely good and if you present a must kill commander it’s difficult to overcome a 3v1. I think it’s a combination of being very good and not presenting as a must kill threat early
(Dana here) Flying under the radar helps for sure.
When I feel that my win percentage is getting too high, I try to help the other players tweak and improve decks and bluff less, sticking to open honest advice over politicking - better that they improve than me handicap myself
You also use more of your brain to do the activity if you use both hands as the dominant hand at times. I had to play piano as a kid and I still have considerable manual dexterity in my off hand, not quite ambidextrous, but good enough that I can work with both hands effectively. I'm pretty confident that it also made me smarter fwiw.
Glad I finally listened to the stats episode!
I'm not the Lorax, you're not the trees is some deep wisdom.
I think new decks perform better because your deckbuilding skills improve with each deck you build and then play and tune, giving you more and more experience so you can naturally skip further and further ahead on the tuning passes, so even a spontaneous deck can be a strong, functional, interesting game piece that's fun to play and play against
its funny how in cedh if your deck is about 26-30% WR its like top tier strong, and dana and joey playing casual in the 34-44% trying to make their decks less strong is such a wild ride.
I know it's probably easier but I do think it. Could a really fun episode to run through the data as a kind quiz show for Matt make guesses about the data.
I'm really curious about the decks that you're tuning down: do you keep a list of what you've traded out so you can quickly power it back up when in the right game?
Personally tracked 147 games so far this year
My win rate was 39%
Avg game went 9.6 turns
Longest game was 15 turns
Shortest was 4 turns
First player won 28% of games
17% of games had T1 fast mana. Of those, the player with the fast mana won 41% of the games
Infinite combos accounted for 11% of the wins
Alt win cons like mill or Karn/Lattice locks accounted for 3% of wins
You had me at data.
any one else notice that Dana said he tunes down his decks because they win too much, but mentions he doesnt tune them down too much cause it feels bad giving away a win, and then is surprised that he has a higher win percentage?
Wait. You're NOT the Lorax?
Ive been wanting to try to track my games but wasnt sure how much or little to worry about tracking. This gives a good perspective on that.
Also, I had no idea you were in the Seattle area Joey! I'm in that area too, id love to jam some games and contribute to your data collection!
I'm only up about on the point on fast mana, but I think the Crypt ban in particular actually sparked a bit of community awareness on the fact that Sol Ring is very much similar a thing to put down on turn one. I noticed this myself in my play group talks and generally with strangers, where more players think about how impactful an opening hand Sol Ring is vs being thought of as the "honest" Mana Crypt. Even if I draw my seven and its sol ring + talisman, I find myself sand bagging the sol ring a little because sure I can start with a huge advantage, but if I dont have something hugely impactful to do in a openly competitive game with familiar people, Id much prefer to just land, land talisman, and put out Sol as soon as it puts me just that one mana ahead, or doesn't jump out too much. I think a lot of players are doing similar, a turn one Sol is not an unreasonable removal target.
You figured out that edh is more about politics then deck strength. Playing unassuming decks is a huge advantage.
30:50 So I'm personally kinda wondering what the definition of Combo is that ya'll used. Is Kiki-Jiki a combo win? Or a combat win? (cause technically the way they died was combat) Because in my groups a Kiki win feels the same to the table as a ThOracle win.
IMO, the Deck Win% numbers seem to be so small that there's a risk of over-interpretation. A binompdf(.25,4,2) says there's a 26% chance of seeing two or more wins. What about stratifying your decks into categories of "frequent" or "infrequent" and looking at win percentages that way? Even so, I think your point might stand. Just looking at Joey's infrequently played decks, there are many above the "expected" win rate of 25%.
There is also possible selection bias. Dana might play decks more often if they tend to win a comfortable percentage of games. Joey might play decks less often if they seem to win too much. So it could actually be (perceived) win rate that determines whether a deck is frequently played, not the other way around.
Thanks for the motivation to give my rusty AP Stats brain a workout! ❤️
This makes me want to track my own win rates next year. Me and my wife already have a scoreboard for 1v1s, so I really just need to start tracking games outside the house.
Do you guys tend to not play modified precons? It looks like you stick to fully personal builds with the occasional stock precon. Makes a lot of sense when you're literally the EDHrec team, but just an interesting difference from maybe the average commander player. Or would slightly modified precons still fall under the "precons" bucket in Joey's data for example?
(Dana here) Brewing something that feels like mine is why I play. I have no interesting in playing what someone else created.
Hot take: I think the win condition percentage would be really different at more competitive and/or CEDH tables. It seems like a lot of win conditions (like lock, combo, alt wins, etc.) are sort of verboten at casual tables. Popping off to create a huge board and then swing for combat damage seems like the most accepted way of "having a fun game" while winning at a casual table. Even burn seems to be negatively affected by this gentleman's agreement to not be mean. Group slug / control burn can be really effective at winning, but most people consider it "not fun". I think what play patterns are considered acceptable really affect what the win condition is.
Commie Commander here,
Have you thought about creating a feature on EDHREC where we can input our playgroup's data and build a real hive mind? I’d totally be down to track it! My group plays almost every Saturday with 8-12 people, no custom bans, full proxies allowed, and an honor system for unlimited mulligans. Our only mulligan rule: no fast mana (e.g., Sol Ring) on turn 1 if you take 2 or more mulligans. Sometimes we throw in Planechase for fun too so I would make sure to asterisk that.
Here’s what I tracked from your episode:
Total Games
Win Percentage
Does Going First Win More?
Avg Game Length
Fast Mana Frequency & Win Percentage
First KO
How Games End
Most-Played Decks
Best/Worst Decks
I’d also love to track:
(the biggest one) Proxies vs no proxies. (This would pretty much be me and my son but there are others who have 100% proxied decks) I'd be interested in showing off the data to counter point a lot of the communities fuss about them.
As well as:
Pregame discussions vs. no communication
Number of deals or political interactions
Salt-score cards that appeared
Frequency of interaction (removal, counters, etc.)
Surprise blowouts (Teferi's Protection, Inkshield, etc.)
Impact of expensive vs. budget mana bases
Deck archetypes played
I can even upload decks yearly or after changes. Contextualizing all this data is so nerdy but so fun for me. What do you think-can we make this happen?
Great episode! ✊
Remember all, seize the means of your own card production, proxy everything regret nothing comrades.
You can use a service like jot form to make a form and get the data by submitting a form per game and make it multiple choose for quick data fill
So I’ve found that my winningest deck is exactly like Joey said it’s Omo and I win with maze’s end generally out of seemingly no where. At the start of the turn I’ll have 5-6 gates and get up to ten by flickering Omo and ulvenwald hydra.
My sovereign okinec deck presents its threats on board. And while it is pretty explosive. Because people see the creatures doubling and sometimes tripling their power every turn I find it much harder to win with this deck
That is absolutely insane that a single card (sol ring) on turn one wins about 50% of games and is not banned. Especially in a 4 player game. Like I thought it was bad but it’s baaaaaad. And before someone inevitably replies, yes ~50 is not the largest sample size, but is approaching statistical confidence.
I have a theory about why Dana wins much more games than Joey: the "new deck" boost.
When playing against players who don't know your deck, you have an advantage because thru don't exactly know what is the threat or important synergy and how to best disrupt it. I've found that when someone in my group builds a new deck, the first couple games are favored for them to win because we don't quite know what to expect. Then the percentage normalizes as the group learns how powerful that deck is, which card is to watch out for etc
(Dana here) Running more opaque/obscure cmdrs doesn't hurt for sure.
probably of note... Dana plays more hipster decks, so it is possible he is just targeted less
(Dana here) It's a factor.
There are definitely decks I want to play more (Prosper and Bristly Bill), but their reputation among the community prevents me from playing them as much, even though I genuinely brew mine to be relatively chill. I try really hard to make all of my decks as fun to play against as possible because I personally don't care about winning. I just want to cast some spells and do timmy things. I just started tracking my stats with MythicTracker a couple weeks ago and I'm very curious to see some "objective" performance metrics on my stronger decks. With that said, I'm fully aware that how people feel about a game is not more important than how often a deck wins, so I'm still not going to play those decks if someone doesn't want to play against them. I have plenty of decks, but I will at least be able to say "it's Prosper, but it tends to win on turn 8 around 30% of the time," or whatever.
Edit: One stat that's practically impossible to track is how effective you are at politicking. I constantly politic and I love it - one of my regular podmates calls me Wormtongue when we're playing with randos on Spelltable because he knows when I'm peddling my bullshit. I really think people should politic more. To be clear: not lie, just be a bit of a subtle weasel. And sometimes I feel bad for it, like last night when I pseudo-unintentionally baited someone into using their removal spell on a problem card when I could have dealt with it, so I saved them from taking 20 points of damage that would have been lethal that same round. So I believe I'm safely in the "chaotic good" archetype. Politicking can be so fun!
I think you should play them more but in pods where all the decks have a bit of a reputation. I love when people bring out swingy commanders because then I get to really let loose with anhelo hahahaha
@ haha. I am trying to play them more. That’s a goal this year. I tend to only switch to them when I see someone playing something I know is strong.
Dana's win percentage is higher because he's playing strangers. Playing against dedicated playgroups means a rougher meta.
I think the assumption that players being knocked out signaling the near-end of the game is a function of the increase in speed/power of commander isn't accurate. It seems more likely that it is a function of the awareness of the player base and of consideration of others. Unless I think someone can remove me/stop me, I tend to not knock someone out unless I feel close to being able to do the same to the table. This feels common among others I play with. We're not trying to remove someone turn 6 and have a game go to 17.
Commander gameplay channels are at a high point in viewership and many of the most popular ones include people being considerate on the battlefield. This is likely to carry over into games.
A reason why some of the numbers are skewing unexpectedly is probably due to the high number of new players entering the format.
I do feel that combo has to be better defined, a lot of life loss and burn wins in my experience involve a combo for the mana production or to generate near infinite’s triggers for a life loss effect or something of the sorts
got my first commander deck ready this december so ill be starting my own records. Nashi moonsage scion :3
This inspires me to keep track of my game data this upcoming year!
Have you all shown an example of building a spreadsheet to track all of this information?
you could start using playgroup? its a life tracker that can help track your games with each deck
Gods I love data breakdowns, great video. This does leave me curious on the effect you 2 have on the decks played. Players may be less likely to play certain win cons or sandbag a card here or there due to the visibility. Anecdotally this year I experienced far more combo wins in my games and the games end far quicker than your 9.x turn games average. However I certainly skew my own data as I invite players to play their meanest most killingest decks and to go for the throat when the kill is available. I think everyone meddles with their own results in this way to some degree, it would be funny to collaborate with the community to get a large enough data pool that we can pave over those personal biases
(Dana here) I think I alluded to that a bit talking about playing with folks at Cons where we are much more used to the chaos, scrutiny, etc.
@@EDHRECast Dana keep up the good work another great video and conversation. Yeah the allusion had me wondering what patterns might arise with a large sample size. I would love it if there were regional patterns formed, like do games end a turn earlier on average in new Jersey? Are there more combo decks in Alabama? Do Canadians play fewer Sol Rings? Which country uses the most red mana? I'd love some way to easily record and share this info so we could use everyone's data to find silly things like that
i wonder if you ran more threatening commanders you would win less next year. it might be running the unassuming commanders is helping your winrate.
(Dana here) Probably, but simultaneously running a cmdr like that is significantly less fun for me since it feels like the card got the win vs me earning it.